


aldbourne, a reverie

by ballantine



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Cold, Episode: s01e06 Bastogne, M/M, Pining, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-20 22:29:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21289205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Summary: Sometimes Harry dreams about the little room he shared with Dick Winters above that shop in Aldbourne.
Relationships: Harry Welsh/Richard Winters, Lewis Nixon/Harry Welsh, Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Comments: 11
Kudos: 29





	aldbourne, a reverie

**Author's Note:**

> BoB is one of those great fandoms where maybe you sort of drift away for a while, maybe you think you're done, but then you learn one (1) new fact about a character and it spurs you to write feverishly for hours. 
> 
> Yesterday I learned that Dick Winters' greatly beloved quarters with the Barneses was, in fact, shared with Harry Welsh. In the evenings he'd have tea and a chat with the couple while Harry hit the pubs. It's all so very cute.

Sometimes Harry dreams about the little room he shared with Dick Winters above that shop in Aldbourne. He dreams about it more often than he dreams of home. Which doesn't make sense until you think about it, and he did think about it – he thinks of _home _and then he quits real quick, because thinking of home over here is no good.

(Please forgive him, Kitty, but remembering your smile or the feeling of your slim fingers combing through his hair uncovers some cowardly weakness in him, one he's usually better at squashing, and it's harder to make himself get up and go on when all his thoughts are only of you, and loving you, and what a stupid fucking waste of his time this whole thing is, _what is he even fucking doing here_ – )

But Aldbourne, that's safe to dream about. It was a measure of luxury now denied him, but one alien enough not to hurt the way home hurts.

It was a small room, as he said – a neat little shoe box that felt too small for two people until he remembered his grandparents probably shared something like this with their five kids in a Philly rowhouse when they first came over. But even after months of living in barracks, and even though a guy couldn't ask for a neater or more discreet roommate than Dick, something about that room often still felt too small.

The two armchairs in the corner were a faded olive floral pattern. They only got some action from Harry if he needed to lace up his boots before tromping down the stairs. The walls were wood-paneled but well-formed, and let in no draft. The curtains were a modest white linen that would've blocked the worst of the sun in the morning if Dick ever kept them closed. But Dick had set his army cot up farthest from the door and angled it by the window to catch the first rays of light. Being a loyal son of Pennsylvania himself, Harry never partook in any Amish jokes but he has a wealth of material for them, oh boy does he.

When he dreams of the little room he shared with Dick Winters, the room is never empty – which is odd, because between Harry's penchant for the pubs and Dick's absurd morning habits, they didn't actually spend that much time in there. But in the dreams he is there, and Dick is there, and those damn curtains are flung open, and the sunlight is making Dick's hair shine warmly where it lies tousled against his pillow.

* * *

  


In Bastogne one night, a tree somewhere behind him decides it no longer wants to be a tree, it wants to be a thousand jagged missiles hurtling in all directions. Like so much of Europe, it's hungry for some skinny Irish flesh.

He swears the bass quake of the explosion comes _after_ the air's already raining splinters and dirt, and that's why he's so late in ducking. He ends up with a shirt full of frozen soil and a sodden ache in his head like someone took a hammer to his helmet.

He gasps and inhales some dirt and then he coughs. His eyes are blinded by tears, but he can see someone's beside him in the foxhole he jumped in, someone who's not moving.

* * *

Sometimes in Aldbourne he'd get to feeling like he was stepping out on a wife he didn't even have yet, and it was Nixon's fault, mainly.

Lewis Nixon was a man's dream pub buddy, because he'd buy all the drinks and he'd never say a peep about calling it a night. He and Harry got along because neither of them saw much point in going through a war sober. If Harry ever got to feeling like he should maybe dry out for a bit, all he had to do was search out Nixon – he could usually be found next to Winters – and Harry'd think _hell, if he can keep doing it_....

Sometimes Lew would walk home with him from the pub, his excuse being his own billet was not so far from the little room Harry shared with Dick Winters above the shop. And here's where Harry'd get this strange feeling like he was stepping out on somebody, because he'd worry about the creak in the step at the top of the stairwell and then worry about wrestling with the door to the room that needed planed because it was a hard close and even harder open.

Dick never looked prim or disapproving when he'd get up to let Harry in on those nights, but Harry would feel a slight burn anyway, like maybe he should've spent the evening in, just this once. It was an absurd thought.

But sometimes Nix was with him, once or twice when they'd both had more than their usual share, and Dick would be indescribably different about it. He wouldn't suddenly turn into a chatterbox or anything like that; he'd nod them inside the room and quietly shut the door like usual. But there was a queer turn to his head as he went back to his cot, a barely-there hesitation to his silhouette when he reclined back and watched them make their stumbling way across the dark room.

Harry would've brawled with any guy who cracked a joke about his size, but it's probably only because of it that he and Lew never broke the cot when they passed out on those nights. They sure landed hard enough.

* * *

  


His foxhole buddy is Private Jay, a replacement they picked up some weeks back. Harry blinks at him stupidly for a second or two. He curses and reaches forward to check him out; when he pulls at his shoulder, the head flops around and something inside the neck crunches. But Jay doesn't mind, because Jay is dead.

Harry curses again and shoves himself back against the wall of the foxhole. He hates being alone with the dead ones out here. Feels unlucky. And it's not like you can share body heat with a stiff.

He puts his head back and shuts his eyes for a moment, just a moment.

What had he been doing before the tree decided it didn't want to be a tree? Trying to keep to a schedule out here requires some superhuman goal-orienting, and Harry'd never been one for the bigger picture, or whatever you want to call it. Hard to remember to keep his men behind the line of such-and-such coordinates when he's running through cigarettes like there's a tobacco farm just down the road, and he's trying to figure who's missing what and who needs moving where and where the fuck Dike is hiding out.

And all the while his own body's nagging at him like it thinks he hasn't realized they're slowly freezing to death.

* * *

Those mornings in Aldbourne after Nixon and he passed out together, Harry was the first of the two to wake up. The pale watery light of the English dawn wasn't enough to rouse him, but he always seemed to know when Dick was moving around and that did the job.

He'd pry his eyes open and grimace away from the burn of Nixon's unshaven neck and the liquor beading up from his pores, and catch Dick just turning away from them.

“Late night,” said Dick, once maybe.

“Late life,” groaned Harry.

Then he'd usually squirm out from under Nixon's heavy body. He'd catch himself in the fall before the floorboards acquainted themselves with his nose and amble past Dick, who was always already dressed and ready to go for his run. He'd throw himself onto the other man's cot, back resolutely to the bright window and let his eyes fall shut for a moment, just a moment.

He'd usually watch through the gummy haze of his eyelashes as Dick walked out the door, the clean white PT shirt stretching across his shoulders. Months on, and Harry never didn't feel a kneejerk second of panic that he was supposed to go with him.

* * *

  


He needs to keep moving. Men are screaming somewhere, the voices distant and muffled by the snow. The sound is bouncing around the woods, making it impossible to tell which direction to run towards. And it's hard to will himself up to break the surface of the earth. Exposure has come to mean death in so many different ways out here.

He blows air out in a hard white gust and crawls from the foxhole out onto the trampled snow, which is covered in shattered earth and tree. His pack presses against his back, never feeling heavier. By now he thinks it should feel like part of his body, his very own turtle shell.

He gets to his knees; his elbows; his feet. The forest around him looks entirely unfamiliar, rendered unrecognizable by the recent shelling. He is a solitary man in an alien place, and the sensation starts to press in on him. He grips his gun.

Far out in the night, the sound has changed. He thinks he hears someone singing, and he starts walking.

* * *

Maybe he dreams about Aldbourne because it was the last place he allowed himself to think of her.

She was still so close in his mind, a barb to snag on with any odd association on the street. He remembered their last fight, the last time they made love, the dance date they went on before he went off to Basic. She was still a real, live person and so was he. Together they thought of wild excitements like the future – it was tangible then, not a story he's told himself so many times, he can't recall whether he made it up or not.

* * *

  


He has no food and barely any water, and his aid kit is empty. He has one cigarette and his flask is half full of some sweet Belgian gin he hates. But there are things you don't let yourself run out of, no matter where you are.

There's some cruel perversion in being out in the woods and not being able to have a fire. He thinks about it more than he's thought about anything in his life. He thinks about how it would smell, the sharp smoke of burning pine clearing out the stench of a body and uniform not washed in weeks; how it would sound_ –_ snap, crackle, pop. Catchy like the radio ads.

But he doesn't dare think of how a fire would feel. It couldn't possible live up to his fantasy.

* * *

Aldbourne changes over time, flexing and distorting to become whatever he needs, whatever he can't have. Ideas that never touched the borders of his thoughts when he was there start making incursions, redrawing the maps of Allied territories.

That little room above the shop grew warmer, softer. Dick's skin blurred perfect until it was always clean and never had even a hint of stubble. The little grin he sometimes wore around Harry grew more pronounced. Harry and Lewis never drank too much, and the days never started sour with a hangover.

Maybe one night he stayed in and little Mrs. Barnes didn't come tapping quietly at the door for Dick. They put the light on in the corner, the little bulb like a fire in his imagination, because yellow always means warm. Dick sat in one of those small olive armchairs to read a book, and Harry, he'd've slung himself sideways over the other one, spine liquid and not hurting like it does all the time now.

And maybe Lew came by after a while, carrying a bottle and two glasses – just enough to relax with, that's all. Harry melted into the armchair and watched as Lew dragged the little step stool from the bathroom over and perched on it, his knees up around his chin, accordioned body turned towards Dick and asking to be played.

Or maybe Lew wouldn't be there that night, maybe it'd be Harry who crouched in front of the armchair. Dick's pale eyes started to smile, lashes golden in the – fuck it, he's gonna make it a fireplace, the Barnes deserved a fireplace – in the warm light and he pulled Harry up onto the chair with him and brought their mouths together. Harry's thighs clamped around his, and

and,

Kitty, Kitty, you have to understand, these guys had his back and it'd be so warm.

* * *

At the crossroads of two splintered trees and a crater that doubles as a foxhole, he stumbles across Nixon, who's trying to find Winters, who is out walking the line somewhere even though he's supposed to be hunkered down at Battalion CP, awaiting a call from Sink.

They squat down in the hole and exchange pleasantries for a few minutes, meaning Nix bitches about the cold and Harry grunts in surly agreement. They're about to part ways again when Harry is hit with inspiration.

“Hey, you have any cigarettes?”

Nixon's mouth twists, caught out, but in the end he's too good a man to deny Harry. He hands a few over, and Harry tucks them away like treasures. The last one he sticks in his mouth, rolling the paper between his dry lips, getting used to the feeling again.

Nixon watches him, expression unreadable through the soft lines of his beard and sleepless eyes. He reaches out and claps him on the shoulder, and used the move as purchase to stand. His hand lingers, after.

“Hey, get some rest, Harry,” he says. “Rumor is, tomorrow's gonna be a bad one.” Bad in what way, he doesn't specify, but the sentiment covers a lot of ground.

“Wouldn't have it any other way,” Harry mumbles nonsensically around his cigarette, not really listening.

His higher faculties fell off the back of a truck somewhere in Holland, and now he stumbles from one animal need to the next; all he can honestly concern himself with right this second is smoking his cigarette. He still needs to light it, which will require freeing a hand and working a lighter. That's going to take some time and motivation. This whole thing is a process.

So he settles in. He shuts his eyes, and tightens his arms around his cold body, and thinks of the little room he shared with Dick Winters above that shop in Aldbourne.


End file.
